


i felt my soul rise up from my body

by shepromisestheearth



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, M/M, deleted scene from Wrath of Khan hehe, whoops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-19 07:08:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22973899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shepromisestheearth/pseuds/shepromisestheearth
Summary: But Kirk’s fingers were too big, and too clumsy for such delicate strings. They splintered apart with a waxen hiss, and the music hung somewhere between. Honey dripping from the ceiling, pooling and messy. And Spock’s death mask was rough; it peeled like crepe paper, that mottled web that was once skin, now something else. A stigmata of a man, or once was.
Relationships: James T. Kirk/Spock
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	i felt my soul rise up from my body

**Author's Note:**

> oh boy! It’s been months since I’ve posted anything here. Sorry about that, guys. Schools been majorly busy, and alongside that I’ve found myself in a bit of a writing slump. However, after a rewatch of wrath of khan a while back, I wanted to write a scene in the style of my last two fics concerning st. Sorry in advance for the angst! I hope you all enjoy. 
> 
> Also, I wanted to add that I will be an artist in the 2020 T’hy’la Big Bang! I’m extremely excited and I cannot wait to see all the writing that comes out of it.

_ if cosmic force is real at all,  _

_ it’s come between you and i _

_ - _

Overture. 

Once, Spock had tried to teach him how to play. His fingers thrumming against those synthetic strings, the gentle incline of his head, like that of the lyre. There was an intensity in his eyes and his focus, his leveled voice explain him how the chromatic scale functioned on a twelve stringed instrument. 

But Kirk’s fingers were too big, and too clumsy for such delicate strings. They splintered apart with a waxen hiss, and the music hung somewhere between. Honey dripping from the ceiling, pooling and messy. And Spock’s death mask was rough; it peeled like crepe paper, that mottled web that was once skin, now something else. A stigmata of a man, or once was. 

They had bathed his body in a glass coffin, and the cadaver that once was him turned in the acid bath. The loosened skin had been scrubbed clean and reattached, he had aired out the place Spock had taken his last, made it sterile, cleaned the Jim off of him entirely. 

Ashen skin, molded from a Promethean and a tear on mother’s neck, and all that was broken. His ebony hair frazzled and coming out in chunks. The fibers littered the ground of the funeral procession, making a carpet upon the medbay’s ground. Mouth stained, hands stained, vision stained red. 

When he had gotten angry before, it was all he had seen and his vision pinched. His hands had felt the tangled mess of the ground and his feline spine arched, jaw sore as he chewed on an excess of feeling. He had folded his skin within itself, joints coming unscrewed. He had screamed before, but not like this, not like his bones were ground. 

He had felt the very snapping of what he could not see, the only thing he knew now. He felt as blind as Spock had been, extending his hand against the glass. It wasn’t red, hanging in the imbalance of this universe and the one that mattered. His shirt thrust open and airing out what was left of him. He kept his back on the glass, and wished he could only knock the apple from his throat. And he tremored. 

He held himself in the mirror once again, and here he saw himself. Pieced together out of all the ways he could’ve bit his tongue, could’ve killed Khan and caught his sleeve and made him stay. Of the waste, of the time he should’ve met him on the bridge and told him from the beginning. How could he have known it would end like this, like it always ended, an imbalance. The death of an officer. And never him, never  _ him.  _ He rubbed the sands from his eyes and loosened his wrists, felt the weight in him again. 

“I don’t want you to see him.” McCoy placed a hand on his heart, “You’ll have a damn stroke.” 

He pulled up his chin and looked at him hard, opening his mouth for harshness and broken glass. But the sever of the bond had pierced his vocal cords, and it only came out as a pathetic plea. An antonym of a Captain, he was doubled over and begging. 

The country doctor shook his head, but moved past and pressed his curvature to the wall. He was shaking too, his brutish hands groping his knees. 

He didn’t know how to touch him. His corpse, how he would brush his fingers against his cheek in the witching hour. This wasn’t the same medbay that came after a mission, this wasn’t the same dash of knowing all would be alright, that he would press his head against him and hear the Spock recite how he would be alright, in percentages. And he was thinking too damn much for him to simply fall on top of him the way he did. 

It was a gentle fall, and it hadn’t been the first, but this wasn’t the same medbay. It wasn’t the same for him to slide his hand around his upper arm and cup his face. For him to call his name, and shove his head into the crevice of his chest where a counterpart would’ve had his heart. And he wouldn’t touch there, for the fear and the truth of it, unmoving. 

“Spock.” It was the only thing left, the only world left on his tongue. It was dry and gritty, none of the childlike wonder that accompanied its syllables. And there was sparkle, because they had taken his eyes already. It was reverent, humbled and tight lipped, a chaste and fast kiss to his cheekbone. He began to crumble into Jim’s mouth. 

His nose pressed against Spock’s, and the tears dripping from his eyes mixed into him and made him brackish mud. Kirk couldn’t open his eyes, couldn’t see the reality before him that all of it was at its end. 

Spock seemed surprised by the question Kirk asked as he restrung the lyre. The golden boy had heavy eyes now, and leaned back on his hand drunkenly, “What Terran song is your favorite?” 

Nonetheless, he knew his answer, and he quirked his head. His face filled with that Vulcan almost-smile, where his eyes crinkled but his mouth remained the same. He reached across the table and held Kirk’s hand. And where hands touched, he began to sing, “ _ so I told a friendly star,  _

_ the way that dreamers often do,  _

_ just how wonderful you are,  _

_ and why I’m so in love with you,”  _

And Kirk folded his hands against the safety rail, and the glare of Genesis burned his eyes. When he closed them and what Spock had tried to tell him with everything that was not of the body, it was stained red. 


End file.
